marketing

Earlier this week, as anticipation for Cyber Monday reached a fever pitch, some interesting bits of news largely escaped notice. First was the speculation that Microsoft’s Kinect motion and voice control systems might be integrated into TVs.

To quote the President, Steve Jobs put the internet in our pocket – and with it the gateway to most human knowledge and connectivity in something that costs about the same as a pair of shoes or a good bottle of wine. I think of four things that stay with me and I think will stay with me for the rest of my life as loyal member of the Apple community:

If your marketing wins an award for creativity, that’s pretty cool. If you test a cutting-edge new technology or channel, please let us know how it goes. If you’re constantly testing new, innovative ideas and offers and strategies, you’re doing the right thing.

But this raises an interesting question - does any industry face a range of factors, constraints, regulation and competition such that innovation reaches a point where innovation is nearly impossible - or, where innovation reaching some point of diminishing marginal returns?

I have been lucky enough to know Andy Stefanovich for over seven years. He is Chief Curator and Provocateur at Prophet, a strategic branding and marketing consultancy, and the author of Look at More. More importantly to me, he is on my personal Top 10 list of cool, creative, innovation catalyst's I turn to for inspiration. Andy a truly innovative thinker and a change agent like no other.

A common complaint that I hear when I run innovation workshops is this, ‘I have plenty of really creative ideas but my boss just isn’t interested in trying anything new. What can I do?’ Let’s leave aside the possibility that this view is itself distorted and take it at face value. It is a tricky situation that most of us will experience at some time. What can be done?

An amazing prediction was made this week by a professor of marketing at NYU and head of investment firm Firebrand Partners, Scott Galloway. Speaking at the American Magazine Conference in New York (and as reported by The New York Post) Galloway said that within two years, Facebook will become the most valuable company in the world.

I’ve always said that you can innovate around literally anything, whether it’s toasters, tires, or paint cans, or a conventional business model like, say, banking, or air travel, or automobiles. All you have to do is use the right methodology to start radically reinventing whatever has gone before.

Customer value pulses are targeted waves that result in steady, rhythmic increases in market growth and value production. Market growth and value production can each happen independently, but then you experience them as propped up by your effort, leaning heavy on the work you must continue just to keep them alive. Better to bring the two together and let them support each other, even create synergies together.